


only a wound that love had opened

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Meetings, Partners to Lovers, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:39:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2311595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Natasha’s first day at S.H.I.E.L.D., on her first full day as someone free of brainwashing or past mistakes, there are people that look at her like she’s still something that can be broken, like she’s still a bomb that will go off if you punch in the wrong code while trying to figure out another way to diffuse it. And then there’s Clint. </p><p>(or, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov throughout the years: the story of a spy learning to love a soldier.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	only a wound that love had opened

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enigma731](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/gifts).



> Thank you to my betas hjea and fidesangelus for read-through and support - couldn't have done it without you guys. 
> 
> "Come with me, I said, and no one knew  
> where, or how my pain throbbed,  
> no carnations or barcaroles for me,  
> only a wound that love had opened."  
> \- Pablo Neruda, _Come With Me I Said And No One Knew_

On Natasha’s first day at S.H.I.E.L.D., on her first full day as someone free of brainwashing or past mistakes, there are people that look at her like she’s still something that can be broken, like she’s still a bomb that will go off if you punch in the wrong code while trying to figure out another way to diffuse it. There are people that shy away from her in the halls, that don’t get too close at training, although she figures that’s probably for the best all things considered – she’ll hold herself back when trying to make nice with people, but she certainly won’t do so in combat. In the end, it’s only the senior agents who take up sparring with her, which Natasha prefers anyway because unlike the new recruits, they generally don’t give a damn about who or what they’re fighting, as long as they get to punch something for a long time.

And then there’s Clint. He keeps out of her hair while she trains and goes to briefings, and she doesn’t see him until near the end of the afternoon, when she’s leaving Fury’s office after getting her preliminary assessment.

“What’s the verdict?” he asks a little too cheerfully, falling into step beside her as she clutches the folder tightly between her fingers. He’s slurping rather unceremoniously on a strawberry milkshake that she remembers seeing served in the cafeteria earlier that day, his lips wrapped around the straw like he can’t get enough even though she thinks there’s a chance that he’s probably been drinking it for about three hours.

“Well, it would seem I’m not a murderer,” she says carefully, still avoiding eye contact as she hits a button on the elevator. “But I’m not exactly a saint, either. I do get to come back tomorrow, so that’s something.”

“Good,” Clint replies nonchalantly, as if she’s talking about her experience at a coffee shop and not something like making sure people trust her enough to not kill them. She finally does look at him, then, trying to understand what she hasn’t been able to figure out since he put down his arrow and decided not to shoot her, since he offered an arm and a seat in his van and the option to talk instead of fight.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” she asks finally, unable to help herself. Clint looks unconcerned.

“What?”

She stares at him, wondering if he’s truly as oblivious as he seems, before deciding that for all his smarts and S.H.I.E.L.D. bravado and archery skills, he just might be.

“Me. You. Us.” She knits her brows together. “Fury told me that you requested to have me as your partner.”

“Ah, right. I did.” He continues to suck on his drink, as if she’s just told him that his haircut looks nice. “You said yes, right? Because if not, I’m going to have to continue to work with Sitwell, and trust me, you don’t want to hear my tirade on how much I hate the guy.”

“But it doesn’t _bother_ you?” she asks again, because she truly can’t seem to figure out why it wouldn’t, why, when the entire world wants to avoid her, he actively wants to spend time with her, in a setting that would eventually involve trusting her to get his back in cases where it might not be so clear as to who the good guys and the bad guys are. Clint continues to give his same, blank stare.

“Why would it bother me?” 

“Because – because –” She stops, suddenly feeling like she can’t continue, because she doesn’t know what to say, because everything feels like it doesn’t make sense. _Because why would you ever want to trust someone like me?_ In the wake of the disorientation she feels flopping around in her brain, she finds herself reaching for the elevator wall.

“Hey,” Clint says a little seriously, noticing the way she falters, grabbing her arm. “Hey, you okay?”

 _No_ , she wants to say desperately. _No, I’m not okay_. But she can’t say that, not yet, not when she doesn’t even know what those words will mean when she admits them out loud. Natasha doesn’t trust easily, Natasha doesn’t trust at all, and so Natasha tells herself that no matter how nice and unassuming Clint is, that she is certainly _not_ going to trust this man who is standing in front of her drinking a milkshake and looking a little too closely at her eyes like he can see what’s behind them, like he can reach in and remove all the layers of the person she’s prided herself on making over the years.

Clint hits another button on the elevator with his free hand and the lift suddenly stops, lurching to a halt, sending her sliding uncharacteristically off balance and into his arms. She straightens almost immediately, still feeling skittish and confused.

“We’re not going anywhere until you’re okay,” he says, keeping one hand around her shoulder. His voice is soft and she’s not used to it, this show of affection at losing herself, this seemingly easygoing response that doesn’t seem to be grounded in judgment or coddling or any of the things she’s associated the reaction with in her previous life.

“I’m okay,” she repeats after a moment, steadying her voice, swallowing down the lump in her throat, the one she doesn’t remember acquiring. “Really.” 

He waits for a moment, as if he needs a certain time frame to believe her and then nods, pressing the red button again. The elevator shudders back into movement, continuing to drop them downwards.

It’s not until they stop that Natasha realizes Clint hasn’t let go of her arm.

___________________

Natasha has spent most of her life learning to read people based on tells and looks alone, but working so closely with Clint gives her access that she isn’t normally accustomed to having unless she’s seducing a mark for a long period of time, and so she learns about him faster than she’s probably learned about anyone else in her life.

She files away the things she picks up the more time they spend together – Clint likes his coffee sweet but not sugary, he favors his right shoulder more than his left when he has to lift heavy objects, and he lets his fingers jiggle almost erratically when he’s bored in mission briefings. She learns that Clint likes to use sarcasm to deflect the conversation when he doesn’t want to show that something’s bothering him, and she also learns that Clint is unequivocally, irrationally stubborn in a way that would drive most people insane – definitely more stubborn than her, which she considers might warrant some type of award, if S.H.I.E.L.D. actually gave out medals for being an obstinate asshole.

She lets him off the hook at first when he shows up to their training session looking like someone has punched him in the face, all sweaty and glassy-eyed and walking like he’s carrying a truckload of coal on his back, because she thinks that maybe this is some sort of trick, that maybe he’s acting like he’s out of it just to appear more vulnerable. It’s a trick Natasha had used all the time in the Red Room, pretending to be sick and starved on the street, wrapped in a shawl and shivering violently to give off an aura of helplessness until someone got close enough so that she could grab the knife out of her pocket and drag it across their throat. But when he stumbles trying to dodge a punch that she knows he can easily deflect without looking, almost collapsing onto the floor with groan, she realizes this isn’t exactly a pretend show.

“What are you doing?” he asks weakly when she bends down next to him, grabbing his arms to help him off the mat.

“Saving you from being stupid,” Natasha says bluntly, helping him to stand up. “Well, being any more stupid than you already are, apparently.” Up close, she takes another look at him, noting the way he can’t seem to keep his eyes open.

“You’re sick. You shouldn’t be here.” 

“I’m fine,” Clint pushes back, shaking his head and almost falling forward again. She barely has time to register the burning temperature of his skin before his forehead hits her shoulder, the heat feeling like it could burn a hole through her thin t-shirt. 

“You’re so far from fine it’s not even worth my response,” Natasha says, trying to keep the edge out of her voice. “Go home, Barton.”

He doesn’t respond to that, just shudders more against her body, and she gently pushes back against him until he’s standing up on his own again. In the harsh overhead light she can see the way he struggles to focus, the paleness that colors his cheeks, and before she can think about what she’s doing she finds herself helping him out of the gym, walking slowly towards the door with his arm slung over her shoulder.

“How did you get here?” Natasha asks, trying not to dwell on the fact that she might feel more than a little worried about him, about the possible idiotic things he must have done to himself before they met up.

“Drove,” Clint says miserably, fumbling around in his pocket until he comes away with a pair of keys, and Natasha stops in her tracks, blinking rapidly.

“You drove here? While sick like this?”

“Felt fine on the way over,” he mutters defensively and Natasha sighs as she takes the keys from his outstretched hand. There’s a part of her that feels utterly out of place over the fact that her job has somehow evolved from sparring and paperwork to helping a sick partner home without ever having been to his private space before. But she shoves it aside as much as she can while piling him into the car, keeping one eye on the way his form is slumped against the window, his breathing slightly more irregular than she feels comfortable with. Thankfully, Natasha has a decently good memory about the mundane details she’s picked up while reading files under the radar, and thankfully, Clint has a GPS that he always keeps his home address in, and _thankfully_ , she’s not entirely as bad at navigating around the winding streets of Brooklyn as she would have thought she’d be.

“You got a key?” she asks finally after she’s parallel parked rather sloppily against the curb, shaking him awake with one hand, and he digs that out of his pocket, too, while she tries not to worry about how sluggish his movements have become.

She gets him up the stairs of the walk-up with some effort and then guides him into bed, pulling the covers over his shoulders before making her way to the bathroom, where she rinses out a particularly disgusting looking glass at least three times over before deciding it’s safe enough to fill with water for drinking. She rummages around in an equally messy medicine cabinet for a box of pills; at least everything in sight is over two years expired but there’s a bottle of Tylenol on the top shelf that’s looks slightly newer and Natasha breathes an unconscious sigh of relief to see that the expiration date isn’t until 2012. 

She shuffles through piles of discarded clothing as she walks back to the bed, sitting down and shaking him awake again, helping him to sit up so he can swallow the pills with relative ease.

“Your apartment is a shithole,” she says as she hands him the glass. “And I don’t even want to know how long it’s been since you’ve touched the dishes in your sink.”

“Maid’s day off,” he mutters in response and she can’t help but smile, because for all he’s admittedly scaring the shit out of her with his helplessness, she’s learning at least that if he can joke about something, it means he’s got some semblance of awareness left inside of him, and that he’s not entirely as bad as he seems.

“Why did you come to work today?” Natasha asks, still confused, as she helps him settle back into bed. “You must have dozens of sick days banked. I’m sure no one would have minded if you took some time off.”

Clint shrugs into the covers and turns over to face her, clutching the edge of the pillow with his right hand.

“Didn’t wanna be alone,” he says quietly. There’s a tremor to his voice that she can’t quite place, and her brain is still trying to figure it out when he reaches out and takes her hand, wrapping his fingers around the curve of her palm.

“Can you stay? Please?”

Natasha swallows, suddenly feeling a little shaky herself, like the way she did in the elevator after her first day when he had touched her gently and kindly told her that it was okay to be scared, to be weak, to take a moment for herself that she had never been afforded before, because moments like that in her past life didn’t mean comfort. They meant death or torture or brainwashing.

Because the thing is, Natasha doesn’t _do_ this, and she doesn’t take care of sick partners and she doesn’t care for people who are vulnerable. She keeps her distance, she doesn’t get involved, and in other cases, she sticks knives into people’s hearts before they can get words out after she’s poisoned their wine or their food.

“I’m not really the type of person you want taking care of you,” she says finally, avoiding the way his eyes crack open. Even through the hazy glow of illness she can see the way he’s trying to understand, as if he’s trying to comprehend her words, like they somehow don’t make sense.

“Just stay,” he says again before closing his eyes, pulling the covers tighter around him, and even though she still thinks the whole thing is all sorts of wrong she obeys, and even when his hand starts to slacken around hers, indicating that he’s sleeping and probably wouldn’t realize if she’s left or not, she doesn’t leave his side.

___________________

The week after Natasha and Clint come back from Buenos Aires, they’re inundated with paperwork and reports, a combination of the fact that Clint had already been putting off his own work before going away in the first place, and the fact that there’s been more follow-up for the case than usual thanks to the involvement of the Argentine government.

Natasha hates paperwork, she hates the mundane aspect of it and the way it keeps her more or less chained to an uncomfortable chair in the S.H.I.E.L.D. bullpen. But she thinks that no matter how much she despises the chore, Clint might actually hate it more. The grousing that she often hears coming from his side of the desk and the way his shoulders hunch moodily cause his demeanor to be off-putting and crabby and entirely unlike the easygoing, loose personality Natasha has come to expect (and, she hesitates to admit, has become somewhat endeared by). 

Which is why when he gets up and sits himself on her desk, placing his hip right between her pen and the expense report she’s trying to finish, she’s taken off guard, not to mention a little annoyed at the interruption. 

“What the hell are you doing?” she asks, tugging at the papers underneath his body, and he eases up slightly to allow her to grab them as she glares up at his face. 

“Taking a break,” Clint says easily, wiggling his eyebrows in a way that Natasha thinks she should find disgustingly seedy, but for some reason, it makes her smile. She catches herself before she can allow the feeling to hit her stomach, instead looking around and over his body, seeing where he’s stashed the rest of his papers. The pile is somewhat hidden by two overfilled coffee cups, as if “out of sight, out of mind” is something that actually works when you’re not five years old.

“You’re done with your work?” she asks, indulging him for a reason she can’t understand. Clint looks irrationally horrified.

“Hell, no. Not even close. But I got two tickets to the Billy Joel concert at Citifield tonight and we need to go get changed.”

Natasha jerks back, looking up in confusion. “What –”

“I’m kidding, I couldn’t actually get tickets, they’ve been sold out for months,” Clint admits with a small smile, sliding off the desk and taking a few stray papers with him. “But I _do_ have two tickets for a movie night at my place, which is, incidentally, free of charge. And it comes with take-out, and transportation is only the cost of a subway fare.”

Natasha stares at him, a little taken aback by his comments. “You’re inviting me over?” she asks slowly, and Clint looks surprised by her tone. 

“Yeah, why not? Besides, it’s not like you’ve never seen the place,” he says with a shrug. Natasha sighs and puts down her pen.

“You were sick,” she replies pointedly. “You were sick, and if I hadn’t driven you home that day, there’s a very good chance you would’ve ended up in a coffin somewhere after crashing into a tree.”

“Aw, Natasha…I didn’t know you cared,” Clint jabs with another smile. “But come on. It’s after six on a Friday. What exactly are you going to do if you don’t come over? Go home and read a book?” 

“Yes,” Natasha replies shortly without thinking about it, because she likes being alone, and she likes having time to herself to read things that aren’t mission files and case reports. Furthermore, she is _not_ someone who gets invited to movie nights, nor someone who sits on the couch and pretends to enjoy themselves when they’re supposed to be thinking of how to make the other person miserable.

“A Friday night by yourself,” Clint says, forcing his lips into an over-exaggerated pout. “You can’t tell me that’s enjoyable.”

“It’s preferable,” she shoots back, shoving her feet against the floor. “Especially when you’ve been working on paperwork all day.”

“All the more reason why you need a beer, some bad Chinese food, and a movie,” Clint says, seemingly unfazed. “Which is usually my relaxation method of choice after a long week.” He nudges her shoulder. “Come on. I’ll drive you, if the subway thing is such an issue.”

“It’s not the subway thing,” Natasha retorts before she can stop herself. Then _what is it_ , she finds herself asking, pushing back from her chair. Because it’s not the fact that she really wants to spend another night alone, but somehow, she feels stranger about this whole "spending-time-with-your-partner-outside-of-work" thing than she’ll admit to. 

“Good. It’s a date. Meet me in the parking garage in twenty minutes.”

He walks back to his desk before she has a chance to properly respond, draining the last of his coffee and, Natasha notes with a small sigh, leaving his paperwork conspicuously half finished. 

\---

After about an hour of being inside Clint’s apartment, Natasha decides that she definitely likes it better when Clint is mobile and alert as opposed to being riddled with the flu and confined to his own bed, but there are still things about his living situation that give her the urge to slap him when he’s not looking. The kitchen has been cleaned (hastily, she observes, trying and failing to cover her disdain when she picks up a plate and notices dried food still stuck to the back) and the floor is somewhat brighter than she remembers it. But the living room is still a glorified mess and there are still clothes on the floor of the bedroom she can see just beyond the door that’s been shoved closed, Natasha assumes, to keep her from running her mouth based on the assessment from her last visit.

“We’re using paper plates,” she decides after she picks up a glass that looks more green than clear, and to his credit, Clint doesn’t attempt to hide his embarrassment as he hands her a beer.

“That bad, huh?”

“Could be worse,” she lies, accepting the bottle from his outstretched hand before taking a sip. It’s quite possibly the cheapest beer she can imagine, all watery and clear with no actual foam, and Natasha thinks she should complain about the injustice of _if you’re going to keep beer in your fridge, at least buy brands that have more than three percent alcohol content_ , but there’s something about it that feels warm and homey and charming.

Because fancy beers and clean, spotless apartments weren’t Clint. _This_ was Clint, with his messy living space and dishes that sometimes weren’t washed correctly and cheap watery beer and cartons of Chinese food that were probably loaded with more calories than Natasha has ever eaten in her entire life, not to mention terrible movies and slightly disheveled hair that hadn’t been properly brushed for the day. And so Natasha has about ten Miller Lights and more than a handful of eggrolls while Clint spoons wonton soup out of a plastic carton and quotes _Wedding Crashers_ , and some hours later, when she more or less falls into his side without thinking about it (finding that his body really is warmer and more solid than she’s ever let herself think about), she barely registers the fact that he’s put his own head on her shoulder, trailing his thumb along her scalp, as if they’re two pieces that have slotted themselves together into a perfect fit without even trying. 

___________________

After the surgery and after the reports, they come to her first. She’s glad for that, at least, because she thinks that if they had decided to wait, if they had tried to keep her out of any news or had talked to anyone else beforehand, she would have, without question, slit the throats of everyone in the waiting room, consequences be damned.

“How bad?" 

Hill doesn’t immediately respond and Coulson takes her arm, steering her away from the bed that’s currently being wheeled into one of the empty rooms, the bed that Natasha instinctively knows holds Clint’s body, battered and bloody and full of tubes that make him look inhuman and not at all like the person she’s come to know over their past few years of working together.

“Barton will be fine,” Coulson says, handing her a chart. “He got lucky. The burns are minor, and there were no major injuries that would otherwise incapacitate him. A little physical therapy, and the doctors are confident that he’ll make a full recovery.”

“But?” she prompts, feeling lead in her lungs, because she can sense that there’s something she’s not being told, that there’s something that’s being held back, and she can’t figure out what it might be because Clint’s alive (and he’s _alive_ , she repeats to herself, willing her stomach to stop feeling like it wants to expel all its contents the way its been doing for hours now, _he’s alive he’s alive he’s alive_ ). Hill clears her throat, finding Natasha’s eyes.

“But, the blast destroyed two of the bones in his inner ear that were instrumental to his hearing,” she says slowly. “We’re not sure if he’ll ever regain it.”

Natasha feels the world rock under her feet, her spine going rigid as her toes dig into the ground. She blinks the room back into focus, trying to understand what Hill’s words mean, what they mean for Clint, for the man who relies so much on all of his senses for the skills he’s so good at.

“So…” Natasha swallows, and her voice feels like it’s stuck in her throat. “So he’s deaf?”

“Theoretically,” Coulson breaks in. “About 80%, though we’re not sure what he’s like right now. Once he recovers enough and we can run some tests, we’ll get him fitted with hearing aids, and he’ll be more or less back to normal.”

 _Normal_ , Natasha thinks. Like when they would tell her in the Red Room it’s okay, it’s just your memories that have been damaged, but we’ll put you in a chair and give you some new ones and when you wake up you’ll fine, you’ll be okay, you’ll be back to _normal_.

“Agent Romanoff.”

Hill is speaking again, and Natasha shakes herself out of her own thoughts, meeting the other woman’s gaze and noticing the way her jaw squares itself before speaking.

“You should know that he hasn’t stopped asking for you since he woke up.”

Natasha’s mouth goes dry, because that alone is enough to make her feel nervous, never mind being stuck with the task of telling him he was basically handicapped in a way that could potentially damage his entire career, not to mention his entire life. She turns on her heel before she can react further, walking into the hospital room and closing the door behind her before approaching the bed. Clint’s curled up on one side, and she swallows down her emotions as she lets her eyes work their way over the bandages on his skin, the red lacerations across his arms and his neck.

“Hey,” she says quietly, touching his shoulder, and he startles more than she thinks he should, looking disoriented and confused, even when he seems to register her face.

“Hey, it’s just me.”

It takes the fear in his eyes and the fact that he doesn’t respond right away to make her realize that, no, he _can’t_ hear, and that scares her more than she’s willing to admit. But she’s Natasha, she’s Natasha and she could watch someone bleed out while drinking tea in a fancy hotel room, and she could kill diplomats without a second thought, and she doesn’t get scared. She’s Natasha, she’s Natalia, the Red Room’s Black Widow, and _scared_ is not in her vocabulary, and scared certainly does not extend to the man in the hospital bed who is looking at her like he’s utterly terrified to see her, even though he’s seen her almost every day for the past three years.

She sits down on the edge of the bed, taking his fingers in one hand and squeezing them tightly before reaching for a pad on the bedside table. He grabs it and the pen she offers out, using his good hand to scribble words onto the paper.

_What happened? What’s wrong with me?_

And Natasha _doesn’t do scared_.

 _Deafened_ , she writes back, and staring at it in black and white makes it more real than she thinks she’s let herself accept. _By the blast_. She finds his eyes and mouths the words along with her writing, letting him use her as something of an anchor, a focus, a way to hold himself back from the darkness that she can feel him slipping into as he tries to process the information. 

 _Permanent?_  he asks slowly, and there’s a brightness to his eyes that makes her insides ache as she grabs the paper again.

_Not sure. Doctors will let you know. You’re going to get some hearing aids._

She watches his face, the way his eyes seem to lower at that, and Natasha doesn’t do scared except maybe when she’s about to die, and Clint doesn’t do vulnerable except maybe when he’s overly sick.

“Clint.”

He turns away and she sighs, grabbing his hand out of instinct as she carves the letters into his palm with the tip of her index finger.

 _CLINT_.

He shifts to meet her gaze and still doesn’t say anything, but grabs for the piece of paper and starts to write again in slanted, uneven letters.

 _Glad you’re here_.

Natasha doesn’t know what to say to that except “me too”, except that seems like something that would break the barrier between what they are (and she doesn’t know, she realizes, because they’re partners and they’re friends, but maybe she cares more about him than a partner, and maybe she thinks more about him than she would for a friend, but he’s never really said anything, and anyway, they’re _professional_ , they’re _partners_ ), so in lieu of having the luxury of not really needing to respond in words, she nods her thanks and runs her fingers up his arm.

“Sleep.” She finds his eyes, making sure he recognizes what she’s saying. “I’ll stay with you.”

And even though Natasha hates hospitals, hates the smells and the sounds and the hard chairs with no backs, she stays with him until he wakes up again, until she can be certain that he’s assured himself she’s not going to leave and run off at the point when he needs someone the most. 

In the end, she’s not sure whether she’s reassuring herself or him of that comfort, but she doesn’t really care.

___________________

Natasha thinks that no matter how long she works with Clint, there will still be things that she isn’t used to – one of them being him barging into her quarters before nine on a Saturday morning, having picked the lock that she’s changed for the fifth time that week because of instances just like this one.

“Morning, sunshine,” and he sounds so uncharacteristically pleasant for someone who’s awake early on a weekend Natasha has to resist the urge throw her knife at his head instead of her pillow.

“Go away.”

“Sadly not an option. We have plans.” 

Natasha counts to five in her head before sitting up, leveling her voice.

“What plans?”

Clint takes a spare banana from the bowl on top of her dresser, and starts peeling it without asking. “The plans that involve us going to Coney Island. I want to make sure that I get there at least once before summer’s over, and word on the street is that you’ve never been.”

“Clint…” Natasha stops, closing her eyes. “I have work to do this weekend. _We_ have work to do this weekend. There’s a sparring session I promised I’d help Agent May with, and you still have expense reports from Paris to finish, and –”

“And I may have already rescheduled the training, and possibly paid one of the newer recruits to do my expense reports,” he interrupts, looking a little sheepish. “I figured you’d be mad about both of those things, so I didn’t bother to tell you.”

Natasha opens her mouth to respond and then closes it, finding that she doesn’t exactly have a response. And she _should_ be pissed, she realizes, she should be fuming that he’s taken it upon himself to change her plans without telling her, because Natasha hates it when people do things without asking her. But it’s Clint, and that’s the problem. It’s always _just_ Clint.

“You’re terrible.”

“No, I’m just a man with a mission.” Clint crosses his arms, standing in front of her bed. “And your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to accompany me to Coney Island today.”

Natasha groans but swings her legs out of bed anyway, flinging the covers back as she does so.

“For the record.” She stops, glaring through sleep-deprived eyes. “If you make me wear one of those stupid tourist hats, I’ll kill you.”

“No stupid hats,” Clint swears, crossing his chest. “We’re riding the Cyclone, though, and I don’t want to hear otherwise.”

Natasha stops, dubiously staring him down as worry catches in her chest. “Are you sure that’s okay?” she asks, pointing towards his ears, where his new hearing aids are hidden. It’s only been four months since his recovery, but he’s adjusted well enough to be allowed back to work, at least, by Medical’s standards, which Natasha trusts enough in turn for her own standards. Clint shrugs.

“I’ll take ‘em out. Better that way, and I won’t hear your screaming.” He tosses her a banana of her own, which she catches deftly with one hand, heaving a sigh.

“If you’re going to be badgering me for the entire day, can you at least leave while I get dressed?”

Clint folds his arms with a flourish as Natasha pushes him out of the room and slams the door.

\----

Coney Island is just like Clint remembers it. Or at least, that’s what he says when they step off the subway at the end of the Q line, Natasha already complaining about the heat and the long ride that Clint swears would have been shorter had they decided to leave from his own apartment rather than S.H.I.E.L.D.’s main base.

“You live in Bed Stuy,” Natasha points out warily, and even though she sometimes still feels like she’s figuring out the basics of New York geography, she knows at least that Clint’s not _that_ close to the ocean.

“Yeah, but by comparison, the distance is like half an hour,” Clint says as he slips on his sunglasses, stepping onto the boardwalk and tugging at her hand. Natasha moves cautiously, trying not to let the gesture affect her, trying not to think about how it looks to other people who are watching them. (Because what do they care, that’s what people do, except Natasha’s not most people. She’s only held hands in public places when it’s needed to be a cover, when it’s needed to be pretend, not when she’s actually cared about someone.)

“You’ve been here before,” she observes as he steps up to a street vendor.

“Oh, yeah,” Clint says, turning around with a grin. “Loads of times. Used to come here with my brother every now and again. Always tried to get Bobbi to come out here with me, but it never really worked out.”

He shoves some money at the man behind the cart and Natasha realizes with a start that it’s the first time he’s talked openly about the parts of his life that he usually keeps guarded. She watches him carefully, waits for him to realize what he’s said, to retract and feel embarrassed about his words, before she realizes that he doesn’t care what he’s said, and he’s seemingly fully conscious of how much he’s just shared in her presence.

He’s _comfortable_ , she realizes with a start, watching him lick ice cream off the side of the cone before it melts onto his hand. For some goddamn reason that she can’t understand, he’s comfortable sharing stuff about his personal life as if they’re friends, as if they’re people who are more than friends, and Natasha feels her throat tighten because Natasha knows her limits and Natasha knows what she’s getting into. Natasha isn’t used to people feeling comfortable, for people allowing her to know what they’re feeling and to trust her with it. Being vulnerable and sick and having your emotions compromised because of it was one thing, spending time together outside work was one thing, but the passing of personal information…well, that was something that had always been a step that Natasha wasn’t willing to take.

“Hey, you coming?” Clint turns, and she suddenly realizes that she’s about five paces away from him, dragging her feet against the pavement. Natasha manages a tight smile and nods, stepping up and taking a breath.

“So, where’s that stupid rollercoaster you won’t shut up about?”

Clint grins, points in the direction of the beach, and tugs at her hand again.

\----

Four hours later, Natasha’s hair is windswept and tangled and filled with sand and dust and ocean spray, and her jeans are sticking to her legs from the heat of the afternoon, and Clint’s face is ruddy and sunburnt and his glasses are starting to slide halfway down his nose. They’ve exhausted every single ride at Coney Island and he’s made her ride the Cyclone no less than three times (once for Natasha to get used to it, once for Clint to get used to it, and once for them to enjoy it together because, as Clint explains, that’s what him and his brother used to do). Natasha had gotten to laugh when he yelled loudly, thanks to the absence of his hearing aids which would normally let him regulate the volume of his voice.

He takes her to Nathan’s before heading back to the subway and they sit at one of the tables under the oversized umbrellas, and he bites into a hot dog before devouring it in about five seconds, reaching for another from her plate.

“Thanks, by the way,” he says as he picks up a napkin, and Natasha finishes pulling strands of loose hair into a bun, looking at him quizzically.

“For what?”

Clint shrugs. “For coming,” he says. “I could never just get anyone to come hang out with me and go to an amusement park and eat hot dogs on their day off…at least, not without judging me.” He smiles a little lopsidedly, grabbing for his soda. “So, you know. Thanks.”

There’s something so genuine about the way he’s responding that Natasha wonders if it’s really that simple, if he really just wanted someone to come hang out with him because he enjoyed their company. It’s meant something to him, she realizes with a start as she watches him wipe ketchup off of his fingers. It’s meant something to him, this stupid day of talking and going on rides and eating hot dogs and ice cream and getting sunburnt when they should’ve been shut up in an office instead, and she doesn’t exactly know how to deal with that: the fact that she’s made him happy and helped him enjoy a day by being herself.

That he’s enjoyed Natasha for who Natasha is, whoever she is, because sometimes, she thinks that she doesn’t know. She thinks he might know better than she does, and to be honest, that thought scares the shit out of her.

She meets his eyes and knocks their knees together under the table, and slips on her sunglasses so that she can avoid completely meeting his gaze.

“You’re welcome,” she says, feeling herself start to smile.

___________________

Natasha doesn’t so much realize that she likes Clint in as much as one day she just realizes she _likes_ Clint. 

She likes when he barges into her quarters unannounced because he absolutely can’t wait to show her some dumb viral YouTube video, or because he wants to complain about the fact that he’s gotten another write-up from Hill _again_ for being late to a briefing. She likes when he sends her text messages with emoticons through the smart phones that shouldn’t really be used for anything except off the grid assignments, even though it had taken her at least a week to understand what an emoticon was and why it wasn’t appropriate thinking to use ten angel halos in a row when she was talking about wanting to throttle someone.

She likes Clint, but she doesn’t think she _loves_ him, and that’s okay. There are limits, she knows, to falling in love, to getting too close. There are monsters that lurk behind unsaid words, there are knives hidden in the depths of memories. To love is to hurt, to love is to _be_ hurt.

And so when Natasha is scared (and she will admit that, maybe, for the first time, that she is _scared_ ), when she stands in front of Loki and crosses her arms and tells him that _love is for children,_ she’s not lying. Not really. She doesn’t really believe that love is for children in the way that most people would take that statement, in the way Loki would probably take that statement, like scoffing at the idea that you could only really have it if you were immature enough not to know better. It’s that Natasha has only known love when it was a weapon.

And she won’t allow Clint to be one.

___________________

After New York, Natasha takes Clint away from the televisions, away from the reporters and the theories and the phone calls and drives him out of the city without telling him where they’re going. She takes him away mostly because she’s afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t, and to his credit, he doesn’t protest, just helps her load up the car with a few of their personal belongings before stretching out in the passenger seat.

She should be worried. She _is_ worried, about too many things that span too many parts of her mind, that make her feel jagged and uneven in a way she hasn’t felt since she walked off the quinjet and into the open handshake of Nick Fury so many years ago. But she’s told herself that she has a right to be worried, and she’s stopped worrying about whether or not she cares about him in that way, or what other people are supposed to think. She knows she stopped caring about what other people thought the moment he disappeared off the grid, the moment he became _her_ – became someone else’s toy, became someone else’s to control and destroy and damage.

She parks behind an old, seemingly abandoned cabin in the wooded depths of Maine, where there’s no sound except for the car rolling onto the gravel, and then hauls their stuff out of the trunk, opening the door with one hand while pointing to the shower.

“Go.” 

“Natasha –”

She pushes him forcefully in the direction of the bedroom and waits until she hears the water start, breathing out her anxiety and unpacking their bags, pausing when she hears him wander back into the room.

“You gonna ignore me the whole night?”

“I’m not ignoring you,” Natasha says evenly, turning around to face him. His skin is bright red from the heat of the shower, the bruises and cuts from the battle fading in certain places while becoming more prominent in others, and she notices that the lines on his forehead are deeper than she thinks they should be, as if his mind is permanently etched in a state of worry that he can’t seem to let go of.

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

Natasha takes a breath, leveling her gaze. “Because you won’t look at me.”

Clint looks absolutely dumfounded. “What?”

“You won’t look at me,” she says sharply, crossing her arms as she finds his eyes, and they stand opposite each other in silence while Natasha squares her jaw, feeling her teeth start to hurt as she grinds them together.

“There’s food for dinner in the fridge,” she says tightly after a long pause. “Pizza. The frozen kind with all the toppings that you like so much.”

There’s also coffee, and the stupid too sweet creamer he uses, and she’s taken a few mugs from his apartment and put those in the cupboard, too, for some normalcy that she hopes will keep his mind focused on the fact that this is no different than when they’ve gone off the grid for whatever reason before. Natasha returns to putting away shirts and underwear until she hears him retreat down the hallway and lets out a long breath, allowing herself to sink to the bed.

He’s sitting at the table when she emerges after her own shower, the waves of her hair more curly than usual in the aftermath of taking a towel to her locks in a rather crude way that she knows she probably wouldn’t bother to do anywhere else. Natasha places herself across from him and takes a piece of pizza, biting into it a little too hard.

“I’m not treating you like you’re one of Loki’s prizes,” she says, trying to keep her voice calm. “And I’m not treating you like I’m scared of you. I’m treating you like you’re my partner. The person that I’ve always known and trusted.” She pauses. “So if you’d like to start looking at me without thinking that I’m ashamed of you, or that I’m judging you, I would appreciate it.”

Clint snaps his head upwards. There’s a lost, confused look in his eyes, one that doesn’t look like Clint at all, and in all that they’ve been through in their partnership, in all the times that she’s seen him broken and hurt, that look terrifies her more than she can express.

“How can you not be ashamed of me?”

“How can you eat pizza with your mouth open?” Natasha returns, and the smile that cracks over his face still isn’t quite Clint but it also looks like it’s been a million years in the making, and so she allows herself to indulge in the emotion as she nudges her foot against his. He starts to laugh, the sound filling the otherwise silent cottage in the middle of nowhere.

\----

She knows better than to suggest they sleep together. She can read the expression on his face, the one that says he’s still not sure whether or not he can trust himself, and so she mentally reminds herself that it’s only been four days, half of which has been time he’s spent either fighting for the world or accepting exactly what had happened. It had taken her more than four days – more than four _years_ – to feel like she could sleep beside someone without hurting them, and so she hands him some blankets and pillows and a sheet for the couch before closing herself off in the bedroom, stripping off most of her clothes and crawling into bed. Her legs hurt from the drive, and her mind hurts from watching him struggle with the damage she knows is not close to being even a little bit repaired, and she still can’t sleep, despite her mental and physical exhaustion.

There’s a part of her that longs to hold him, but she forces herself out of the mindset. It’s a distance she needs to allow him, she knows, an olive branch that she needs to offer if she wants any chance of him being able to trust her during the long period of healing that they’re both going to have to endure.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, and is pretty sure that the only reason she wakes when she does is because her mind has made it impossible for her to relax for more than a few hours at a time. It takes her a moment to register his form when she turns over, a shadow of a body that looks like a barely visible stain against the otherwise smooth darkness.

“I can’t sleep,” he says from the doorway.

“Yeah, I know,” Natasha says quietly, edging up in bed so that she can make him out more clearly, wondering how long he’s been standing there. She pauses before continuing. “You wanna come sleep with me?”

She watches him move slowly towards the bed, as if he’s suddenly realizing his fear that every step brings him closer to a dream he won’t be able to wake up from, as if he’s afraid that getting too close will cause him to hurt her. He stops halfway across the room, looking down at his feet, and Natasha frowns.

“What’s wrong?” she asks softly, and Clint rubs a hand across the back of his neck.

“It’s, uh.” He pauses and lets out a sigh. “Remember what you told me when I came to work and I was sick?”

Natasha furrows her brow, because, yes, she does remember but that was years ago, and she can’t figure out how _he_ even remembers, because he was sick and out of it. The fact that does sends a stab of anxiety through her heart and maybe it shouldn’t at this point, because she’s not even sure what she should feel anymore when it comes to him, but the hairs on the back of her neck stand up anyway, and her skin crawls at the memory.

“I don’t think I’m the type of person you want taking care of you,” he finishes after a beat. 

Natasha closes her eyes, willing herself to stay calm. She wants to punch him. She wants to punch him and then kiss him and then scream at him and then tell him how stupid he is, how stupid _she_ is for letting herself care about him so much that she would probably giving her life for him. There was a time not so long ago that she swore that she would never give her life for _anyone_ : not her country, not S.H.I.E.L.D., not her team, and certainly not the man standing in front of her, whose existence she has already saved a thousand times over. 

“I think you’re exactly the person I want to take care of me,” she says matter-of-factly, opening her eyes and pulling down the covers. “And if you don’t get into bed with me right now, I will slap you so hard, you’ll be unconscious for another three hours.”

She can see the fear in his gaze, the one he tries to shove away, and hardens her look just enough.

“Come to bed,” she repeats quietly as he starts to move closer, until she can fully see the vulnerability that he’s attempting to hide.

He grabs onto her arm as he crawls onto the mattress and she pulls his shaking body against her own, settling his head underneath her chin and letting him feel her weight, the beating of her heart and the strength of her pulse and everything that makes her whole and alive, everything that she knows he needs to remind himself of in this moment.

She holds him while he cries, and it’s only when she’s sure that he’s finally fallen into a restless sleep that she lets her own tears start to fall.

___________________

He’d been in Afghanistan when S.H.I.E.L.D. fell.

That was all she knew – that he had been in Afghanistan. She didn’t know much else because she didn’t need to know, and she preferred to keep it that way. It was their slightly unorthodox way of working, a development years in the making solidified by a strong trust, that as long as there were no immediate threats, there was little reason to be aware of the smaller details of each other’s work.

She kept to herself after Hydra's reveal, finished the mission she had been assigned to, saved the people she was responsible for, and dumped her sordid past into the wide, bright world of those who would continue to judge her based on the life she had built for herself. When people asked, she deflected, and the ruse seemingly worked – if the Black Widow wasn’t worried about her partner and seemed to trust that everything was fine in the wake of an entire conspiracy that threatened the safety of too many people to name, then why should the rest of the world worry?

She had found the necklace in one of his dresser drawers, wrapped in a thin plastic bag and shoved into the corner with his mismatched socks, when she visited his apartment a few days after he had left, to pick up some of her own clothes in preparation for the trip to DC to meet Steve for the Lemurian Star assignment. It had taken her by surprise not because of what it was, but because Clint didn’t _do_ material things. Natasha didn’t do material things. That wasn’t who they were, and the fact that she hadn’t known about the necklace unnerved her a little bit, but she had put it on anyway, almost unconsciously, and hadn’t taken it off since.

And it’s not that she needs the validation of his feelings, or that she wants to show the world that she has a personal connection to something more than guns and knives and paperwork. It’s because she knows who she is with Clint. She knows who she is when she’s in his arms and when he’s making a stupid joke over her comm and when he brings her soup from the diner by his house on the days that she doesn’t feel like doing much of anything. She knows who she is when there’s an arrowhead sitting at the curve of her throat, the same way a real one did over seven years ago.

So when Natasha tells Steve that _truth is a matter of circumstance_ – that _it’s not all things to all people all the time_ – she’s not lying, not really. She’s always been a person made from hastily put together pieces, as opposed to someone who was carefully molded with love and thought and care. She chooses her personalities and the things she wants to share from an open box of carefully compartmentalized secrets, and she armors herself with layers to protect herself from being hurt, from being read, from being compromised.

She’s only real and alive when she’s with Clint, and it’s a closely guarded admission that she’ll take to her grave, because it’s the most personal secret she’ll ever harbor.

\----

They find him in a compromised safehouse just outside of the Afghan border, on Natasha’s orders with Fury’s help two weeks after the dust settles metaphorically and physically in DC. He’s got two broken bones in his leg and cuts on his face and more blood loss than she’s comfortable with, but after a brief stay in a small hospital he’s allowed on a chopper home, and allowed into Natasha’s care with a lot of cautionary words and even more medication. It’s not so different from missions where one of them has come close to not returning home at all, except for the fact that it is.

They trade stories of their time apart, complete with a rundown of bruises, scrapes and other collected war wounds – and she’s been wearing the necklace for so long without thinking about it that it’s become a part of her, a branding, something molded to her skin. It’s another fragment that has been shaped to fit her, only this time, for the first time, it’s a piece that she allowed herself to add of her own accord, and one that she never wants to lose. When he asks, it makes her realize that she’s forgotten just how long he’s been gone.

“I found it,” she answers, running her hand through his hair, the too-short freshly cut spikes, sheared just enough for him to look familiar. “In your drawer.”

Clint swallows, and then blinks slowly as Natasha moves her fingers, tracing a line down the curve of his face.

“How long?”

Clint shakes his head, closing his eyes. “A few months after New York. I was going to give it to you when you went back into the field.”

Natasha stills with a hand on his face. “You could’ve,” she says slowly, suddenly worried that he’s taken her for someone who sneers at material items, with the years she’s spent saying she doesn’t believe in rings or necklaces or earrings, things that symbolize how you can be bought instead of won, things that symbolize an outward display of weakness by announcing to the world you have a vulnerability that can be exploited. But now it’s different, and now she doesn’t care, and to be honest she’s never really cared because it’s him. And it doesn’t matter what they are anymore, it’s just _him_.

“You know that I would’ve taken it willingly.”

“Yeah,” Clint says quietly, shifting against her as much as he can, and his voice takes on a cautious tone. “I know. The thing is…I just realized I didn’t have to.”

She hears his breathing even out, and as she takes his hand in her own, she realizes that _this_ is what he’s been trying to tell her for so many years, what he’s continually told her without actually saying it, what he’s allowed them to have without anyone knowing – a movie night at his apartment, an opening into the window of his life, a day at an amusement park, a gentle hand during the first moment of everything scary, when that one building block of stability was a foundation that needed to be laid.

“I never said it,” he says suddenly as if he’s read her mind, and she’s surprised and not all at once, because fuck, she would take all of his silent, unexpected ways of saying _I love you_ and bottle them up if she could, all of the things that are piled up in her memory like a collage of pictures too precious to touch. Natasha smiles.

“I know,” she replies, pulling his head down again and pressing a kiss to the top of his scalp and then his cheek and then his neck, feeling the warmth of his lips as they turn up against her skin. She likes him, and she loves him too, and she knows that now. This is love, and fuck Loki because _this_ is love and fuck S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra because _this_ is who she is, Clint’s hands on her skin and his mouth on her cheek, and years of declarations between them that have never needed words in order to be real.


End file.
